Don’t understand lack of respect

Just got through watching them getting the bodies of victims of WWI ready for shipment back to the U.S. to their families. Was thankful my dad wasn’t one of them. He was 19. Only gassed twice, but he made it home. I wonder why he did it and went through what he did in France for some that won’t even stand in respect for a country that makes them rich. My dad, and many others if alive today, I’m sure he’d be ashamed of some who acted like this.

Marilyn Tindal

Las Cruces

School safety suggestions absurd

This is a belated response to Randy Lynch’s recommendations as to how to make schools safer. They are absurd.

First, he states that all parents should walk their children to school and pick them up after school. Did he forget that most parents have to work? He then seems to blame single mothers. What? How sexist can you get? And I’m sure he’s against contraception and abortion as well.

Then he wants to redesign schools so that every child has the same kind of badge to get into the building as I have to get into my office. Three problems with that. First, and most importantly, where are the schools going to get the funding to retrofit every door? I’m sure Mr. Lynch is against taxes too. Second, school children are notorious for losing things; how long before each child loses his badge at least once each school year, or, worse, the badge is stolen? The shooter may already have his or her own badge. Third, those long lines at the doorways will cut into the school day we need to be long enough so that we don’t continue to send semi-literate teenagers into the world.

Finally, Mr. Lynch would like to put all sorts of people with guns into the schools. Not only teachers, who besides learning how to become inspiring teachers will also have to learn how to become marksmen. Mr. Lynch also wants to send armed veterans into the schools. How many of them have PTSD? The more armed folks parading around the school – the more potential for one of them to turn out crazy, or not be crazy, and just careless. No, Mr. Lynch, the solution is fewer guns in the hands of folks who will misuse them, and a culture which values peace, not violence.

Barbara Mandel

Las Cruces

Letter about state dinner must be a joke

Surely the letter from Mary Catherine Fuller regarding the state dinner at the White House was meant as a joke. Do you think the president of France and his wife were not remembering the true character of our president - the Access Hollywood tape, the women who have come forward with accusations and being paid to keep quiet, comments about African nations, his treatment of immigrants, throwing paper towel rolls in Puerto Rico as thousands died after the hurricane, and many other instances of inappropriate behavior and immorality of this president.

The "glorious display of pomp and circumstance" was an embarrassment, as is every appearance of our president.